Despite promises to fix it, customers say Mass Save still a mess
Mass Save promised them thousands of dollars, but months passed with no check
Mass Save promised them thousands of dollars, but months passed with no check
Mass Save promised them thousands of dollars, but months passed with no check
Last year, executives at the state's largest utility companies told Massachusetts lawmakers they had a plan to fix Mass Save, the energy efficiency program beset by long delays and a glaring lack of customer service. But months later, multiple homeowners say they're still enduring long waits for payouts, especially for the largest rebates offered in the program.
Dave Reid just wants his money.
"It's $8,437.50," he said. "I want the check."
Four months ago, he converted the heating and air conditioning systems at his Wenham home to a whole house heat pump, enticed by the up to $10,000 rebate available through the Mass Save program. Heat pumps are fully electric, and so two years ago, Mass Save boosted the dollar amount of the rebates available for them to encourage homeowners to abandon oil, natural gas, or propane heat. The thinking is that as the state's power grid adopts more sources of renewable energy, Massachusetts homes that have switched to all-electric will also become more green, helping the state meet its climate goals.
Reid applied for his rebate back in September and was approved at the start of October. But since then, he's heard nothing: there’s no check and no communication.
"Between all of the calls, [I've spent] probably up to 8 to 10 hours," he said. "Just last week was an hour and 45 minutes. And this is just to get to the point where they can't tell me anything."
Reid is hardly alone. NewsCenter 5 has heard from several homeowners facing the same shocking wait.
"Basically, tell yourself you're not going to see your money for four to six months," Reid said.
Monica Daly spent $37,000 to convert her Natick home to a whole house heat pump and submitted her Mass Save rebate last summer. She waited the six to eight weeks they told her for the $10,000 check. But no check arrived.
"You have to pay upfront. You have to pay the installers. And then the promise for this rebate was going to help offset that," she said. "It does seem unreasonable at this point that four months, hours of time [spent], emailing. What's that all about? What's going on on the other end?"
It's not supposed to be this way. Several executives from the state's big utilities were grilled by state lawmakers late last year after NewsCenter 5 exposed several problems at Mass Save, including waits of up to a year for Mass Save. The utilities hired a new company last summer - Resource Innovations - to run the Mass Save program. They say they expanded the call center and promised to improve communication. It is, after all, not their money. Utility customers across the state pay a surcharge on their bills to fund this program.
"We own this. We're working on it," said Tilak Subrahmanian, Vice President of Energy Efficiency at Eversource. "We recognize that we haven't had the transparency and escalation process."
"It's well known, and we've acknowledged that we ran into some challenges with rebate processing earlier this year," said Chris Porter, Director of Customer Energy Management at National Grid. "Since the new vendor has taken over, we are paying those rebates in an average of 30 days from date of submission which is an improvement of where we were earlier this year."
But that's not the case for Reid, Daly or other customers.
A spokesperson for Mass Save acknowledged to NewsCenter 5 that "some customers have experienced longer delays during the transition to our new rebate processing vendor, and we remain committed to the work we are doing to improve our customer experience." Mass Save says it's paid out $50 million in rebates to 17,000 customers since Nov. 1.
Anyone facing a lengthy delay should email their state representative or state senator. Mass Save is a state-mandated program, and state lawmakers are best equipped to ensure the problems get fixed.